COUNT GRISHNACKH: When I did the anonymous interview in January 1993, I exaggerated a lot, and when the journalist left we—a girl and I—had a good laugh, because he didn’t seem to understand that I was pulling his leg. He took everything dead serious. Unfortunately, he went to the police the next day and had me arrested, and his newspaper printed his version of what I had said while I was in a holding cell and unable to tell anybody that it was just a load of crap I had said to create some interest in a musical genre—to help Euronymous get some customers [in Helvete] for a change.
MORGAN HÅKANSSON: In the middle of the night Euronymous called and told me, “Today the war has begun,” when the first church burning was a reality. It was something we had talked about many times and we were very excited about it. The problem was, people wanted to brag about what they did instead of just doing it for a specific cause. And that’s their undoing. That’s how they got caught.
FROST: I never took part in any such acts. I do not support crime. I don’t think we owe anything to Christianity and the Church, but to try to destroy them would not be a constructive way to move forward. It will backfire.
By early 1993, four more churches had been torched, two in Bergen—Åsane Church and Storetveit Church—Vindafjord’s Skjold Church, and Oslo’s Holmenkollen Chapel. After a thorough police investigation, Emperor guitarist Tomas Thormodsæter Haugen (aka Samoth) was sentenced to sixteen months in prison for burning down the Skjold Church with Vikernes. In total, seven churches in Norway were set aflame by black metal musicians.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: Originally, [Skjold Church] was an old pagan holy site where our forefathers used to celebrate the sun. And what the Christians did was move this church from another place and put it not close to this holy site but on top of it in the midst of the circle, actually breaking up the circle. And on the pagan site they put a big stone cross. So if they have no respect for the Norwegian culture, why on earth should Norwegians respect their culture?
CRONOS: Look, civilized creatures on this planet who have all gone to school and learned about society should know the difference between burning churches and fantasy. We are entertainers—if I wanted to be a murderer or a Satanist, I’d do that full time instead of playing songs for a living.
ALICE COOPER: Now, if you’re in Norway and you want to have any kind of authority or credibility in metal, you have to eat your lead singer. It’s like rap: if you don’t shoot somebody you can’t really be a rapper. I love these advertisements in metal magazines for all these bands that are trying to be more evil than the other band, or they’re trying to be more Celtic or more occult. It’s just hysterical. These guys are role-playing for a couple years, and then they turn into something else. They go, “We are Gothora, and we are Vikings!” No, you’re not. You’re not Vikings at all. Vikings don’t go to McDonald’s.
IHSAHN: Metal has always been about the opposition, breaking with the rules. That’s why metal has always been associated with the devil. For each decade, when something gets accepted you need to go to more extreme forms to create the same effect—the break from conformity. We were all influenced by each other, then someone took the leap with the church burnings, and the flame ignited. You have to remember, we were teenagers. Euronymous was twenty-three and the rest of us were late teens, and some were twenty. You’re very impressionable at that age.
In the mid-nineties, Emperor was temporarily crippled by the extracurricular activities of the Inner Circle. In 1994, in addition to Samoth’s jail sentence, bassist Terje Vik Schei (aka Tchort) was arrested for burglary, knife assault, and grave desecration, and sentenced to two years. And in August 1994, drummer Bård Eithun (aka Faust) was sentenced to fourteen years in jail for killing a stranger, Magne Andreassen, in the woods outside of Lillehammer. He was released in 2002 after serving nine years and four months of his sentence.
FAUST: I was walking back home again [after going out to drink]. This man approached me. He was obviously drunk and obviously a faggot. He asked me if we could leave this place and go up to the woods. So I agreed, because already then I had decided that I wanted to kill him. I [had] a black knife with a handgrip. He was walking behind me and I turned around and stabbed him in the stomach. He went down on his knees. I started stabbing him in the neck and face. Then he lay down and I was standing over him stabbing.
IHSAHN [1994 interview]: I was not surprised at all when Samoth was involved in the church burnings and Faust was accused of murder. Faust has been obsessed with serial killers and murder for quite some time, so when this homosexual made a pass at him in a park in Lillehammer, he took the opportunity to experience the thrill of the kill. Personally, I think human life has very little value in itself, and that it’s the relationship you have to people that give them value. One can only experience emotional affection through one’s own senses. Thus, the death of someone outside my range of personal relations has no emotional effect on me.
FAUST: All I care about now is making flesh-ripping metal again with Mongo Ninja, Blood Tsunami, and Aborym.
The most infamous and dramatic crime in black metal history took place on August 10, 1993, when Count Grishnackh murdered Euronymous. While the two extreme musicians started as comrades, some believe they became locked in a power struggle to control the Inner Circle. Others claim Grishnackh was irate because Euronymous owed him money. Grishnackh insists he was acting in self-defense and that Euronymous was already planning to kill him.
FROST: At first, Varg and Euronymous seemed to be the best of friends. Varg even recorded all the bass parts on Mayhem’s excellent De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas [after Necrobutcher left the band]. The rivalry started later. Irritation became anger and just escalated.
GRUTLE KJELLSON: People felt threatened by Euronymous because of the controversial things he said in interviews on radio and, obviously, because he was trying to establish this so-called “black circle.” But it was more or less just a PR stunt. I don’t think he had any actual enemies—well, except for one, obviously.
HELLHAMMER: I didn’t believe that it was going to such extremes, but to other people it could likely have gone the other way. Euronymous told me that he was going to have Grishnackh killed.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: In 1991, most of the metal musicians in Norway believed Euronymous was a so-called cool guy, but in mid- or late 1992, most of us realized that he was not. When his label released the Burzum debut album in March 1992, he had to take a loan to pay for it; he [borrowed] the money from me. When he sold all the Burzum albums he paid his private bills rather than print more records—or pay me back the money he owed me—and I never saw any royalties either. When the record sold out, he had no money to print more records. This is probably the reason why some people think I killed him for money, but certainly I wouldn’t have gotten my money back by killing him. Breaking his legs would probably have worked, but not killing him.
HELLHAMMER: I didn’t see Varg very much at the end. But he was writing letters to Euronymous. I know he and Euronymous were angry at each other. I just didn’t know how angry.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: For some months this dislike for Euronymous spread in the metal scene, as more and more people understood what a moron he was, and he blamed me for all of this and started to hate me. He believed it was my fault people lost their respect for him. In a sense he was right, as I certainly didn’t keep my opinions a secret, but I think he brought that upon himself. He had made a fool of himself. Further, when the media wrote all that crap about me it made him feel less important. Suddenly he was no longer the main character in the hardcore metal scene. As he saw it, that, too, was all my fault.
HELLHAMMER: One night, Count Grishnackh broke into Euronymous’s house and stabbed him, like, thirty times. He stabbed him in the face right under the eye, and he had to put his foot on his face to get the knife back out again.
DANI FILTH: Before that happened, no one outside of a small following in Norway knew who Mayhem were, and then suddenly he went from Anonymous to Euronymous all o
ver the world.
* * *
KERRANG! MAGAZINE (August 1993): Euronymous, 25, died from multiple stab wounds. He was found dead on the staircase outside his Oslo flat at 5:15 a.m. on August 10.
* * *
COUNT GRISHNACKH: Euronymous had begun to plot against my life. He wanted to kill me. In his view I was the problem, so by killing me he believed the problem would go away. His problem was that he included a few metal people in his plot to kill me, and they told me. He had told them because he trusted them, but obviously they had warmer feelings for me than for him. At one point he phoned Snorre [Ruch], who lived in my apartment, and Snorre let me listen to what Euronymous had to say. He told Snorre, “Varg must disappear for good” and similar, confirming the plans others had told me about earlier.
TOM ARAYA: For a lead singer of one band to kill the leader of another band—where does that come from? They’re in another mind frame. They’re tapped into something else and everything they see is different. Those people have issues.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: A lot of people claimed that I overreacted because Euronymous was such a wimp and didn’t have the guts to kill me. Sure, he was a wimp, but I took the threats seriously in this instance because instead of telling everyone like he usually did, he only told a very few people he trusted, his closest friends—or those he believed were his closest friends. On top of that, he’d been convicted of injuring two people with a broken bottle because they had “looked at his girlfriend” at a bus stop and was about to go to prison for four months. With his back against the wall he was capable of executing his plans. If scared enough, even the biggest cowards become dangerous.
LEE BARRETT (head of Candlelight Records, ex–Extreme Noise Terror): Euronymous’ death was harsh and brutal, which reflects perfectly on his life. He will be missed by some, but remembered by all.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: The same day [Euronymous] told Snorre about his intentions to kill me, I received a letter from him, where he pretended to be very positive and wanted to meet me to discuss a contract I had not yet signed. This was the only excuse he had to contact me, and it seemed like he was trying to set me up. According to his friends, the plan was to meet me, knock me out with a stun gun, tie me up, and put me in the trunk of a car. He would then drive into the countryside, tie me to a tree, and torture me to death while videotaping everything. My reaction to this was naturally anger. Who the hell did he think he was? The same day I decided to drive to Oslo, hand him the signed contract, and tell him to fuck off, basically, and by doing so take away all the excuses he had to contact me ever again.
* * *
KERRANG! MAGAZINE: Police suspect that Euronymous knew his killer or killers, and had admitted them into his apartment. Euronymous’ body was found dead only in underwear.
* * *
COUNT GRISHNACKH: [Snorre and I] went to the front door of the building block and I rang his doorbell. Euronymous was sleeping. You might think that visiting people in the middle of the night was a bit strange, but it was perfectly normal for us. A lot of people in the metal scene were nocturnal creatures. He said, “I am sleeping. Can’t you come back later?” I said, “I got the contract. Let me in,” and he buzzed me in. His flat was on the fourth floor and I began climbing the stairs. Snorre wanted to have a cigarette, and since he couldn’t smoke in Euronymous’s apartment or my car, he waited downstairs to have one.
* * *
KERRANG! MAGAZINE: According to police, the act of murder began in the victim’s fourth-floor apartment. Blood tracks began in Euronymous’ hallway.
* * *
COUNT GRISHNACKH: Euronymous was waiting for me in the entrance looking very nervous, and I handed him the contract. Of course he was nervous. The guy he planned to murder showed up at his doorstep in the middle of the night. I then asked him what the fuck he was up to, and when I took a step forward, he panicked. He freaked out and attacked me with a kick in the chest. I simply threw him to the floor, and was a bit stunned. I wasn’t stunned by his kick, but by the fact he had attacked me. I didn’t expect that. Not in his apartment, and not like that. He had just started to train in kickboxing, and like all beginners, thought he had become Bruce Lee overnight.
FAUST: That’s bullshit. There’s no reason why Øystein would attack Vikernes after he’d just woken up, still in his underwear. He wouldn’t do it. I can understand [the self-defense claim] though, because Vikernes wanted to get away from a twenty-one-year first-degree murder sentence. It’s a natural move—it was the same with me in court. [When I committed murder] I tried to get away from it by claiming self-defense.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: He jumped from the floor and dashed for the kitchen. I knew there was a knife lying on the kitchen table. I jumped in front of him and managed to stop him before he got his hands on it. He ran for the bedroom, and I figured he was going for another weapon. He had some weeks earlier told people he would soon get the shotgun back from the police that Dead used to shoot himself, so I figured he was going for that or his stun gun. I gave chase and stabbed him with my pocketknife with an 8-centimeter blade. I was a bit surprised when he ran out of the apartment. It made no sense to flee, and it made me angry to know that he had started the fight, but the moment it didn’t go his way he decided to flee instead of fighting like a man.
* * *
KERRANG! MAGAZINE: Several of the victim’s neighbors were awakened by the sound of a struggle at approximately 3 a.m. but had dismissed the noise as a drunken brawl.
* * *
COUNT GRISHNACKH: Outside, we ran into Snorre, who had finished his cigarette. All the doors looked the same, and Snorre was pretty absent-minded and ended up one floor up by mistake. Confused, he had gone back down and used his lighter to try to read the door sign and figure out if this was the right apartment. As he was doing so, Euronymous came running out in his underwear, bleeding and screaming like a madman.
SNORRE RUCH (Thorns, ex-Mayhem): [I think one reason Varg killed Euronymous is because] he was envious of Bard [Faust] because Bard had killed a man and Varg hadn’t. Varg was saying that what Bard had done was uncool, but inside the scene, Bard’s actions commanded respect. . . . The Count said it was no big deal to kill someone.
COUNT GRISHNACKH: Euronymous ran down a flight of stairs and stopped to ring the neighbor’s doorbell. He quickly realized that I had come after him, so he continued to flee down the stairs, knocking on the walls, trying to ring the doorbells as he ran past them, screaming for help. I stabbed him three or four times in his left shoulder as he ran—that was the only part I could hit while we were running. He stumbled and broke a lamp on the wall and fell into the glass fragments in his underwear. I ran past him and waited. Snorre was so surprised and terrified he looked like a ghost and as if his eyeballs were about to fall out of his head. He had a blackout and didn’t remember anything until I later asked him if he was okay. By then Euronymous was back on his feet. He looked resigned and said, “That’s enough,” but then he tried to kick me again, and I finished him off by thrusting the knife into his forehead through his skull, killing him instantaneously. His eyes rolled back in his head and he moaned as his lungs emptied and he fell to a sitting position with the knife still stuck in his forehead. I held him up as I held on to the knife and when I jerked it out he fell forward and rolled down a flight of stairs like a sack of potatoes, making enough noise to wake up the whole neighborhood. He had intended to kill me, and I did not feel bad for killing him. His cowardice made me angry and I saw no reason to let him live. Had I, he only would have made another attempt on my life later on.
HELLHAMMER: On the day of Euronymous’s death I called him at the office. Nobody picked up the phone. Then I called his parents, hoping to reach him there. I was told that Euronymous was murdered the night before. I was shocked. I didn’t know who did it, but I was sure it could be the Swedes. There were constant conflicts among Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish clans. Dead bodies were found everywhere. My friends and I got knives and guns and prepared to defend our
selves. We were waiting for the worst to happen. But soon we learned that Grishnackh had murdered Euronymous. That shy boy turned out to be a killer. The police had their suspicions. They watched him and watched him, and one day while he was walking down the street in Bergen with some friends they arrested him.
SILENOZ: The day Euronymous was murdered I went to the post office to pick up a package he had sent me with some T-shirts and a new CD. As I’m walking into the convenience store I see the story all over the front page of the newspapers. It was kind of weird to experience that at age seventeen.
FROST: Lives turned upside down, and it was a while before I was able to take in what had happened. But I had started to go down a pretty dark alley of my own, and it was impossible to really shock me at that point. As a young person, I felt such an affinity for darkness that I wasn’t able to separate what was constructive and what was destructive.
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal Page 54
